Dublin (3 page)

  Whatever Conall said, it seemed to Finbarr he was sometimes lonely.

  To seal their friendship, some years earlier, the prince had given him a puppy. Finbarr had taken the little fellow everywhere. He called him Cuchulainn, after the hero of legend. Only gradually, as the puppy grew, had Finbarr come to realise the nature of the gift. For Cuchulainn turned out to be a magnificent hunting hound, of the kind for which merchants came to the western island from far across the sea, and for which they would pay with ingots of silver or Roman coins. The hound was probably priceless. It never left his side.

  "If ever something happens to me," Conall once told him, "your hound Cuchulainn will be there to remind you of me and of our friendship."

  "You'll be my friend as long as I live,"

  Finbarr assured him. "I expect it's I who will die first." And if he couldn't give the prince a present of similar value in return, he could at least, he thought, make sure that his own friendship was as constant and loyal as the hound Cuchulainn was to him.

  Conall also had another talent. He could read.

  The people of the island were not strangers to the written word.

  The merchants from Britain and Gaul who came to the ports could often read. The Roman coins they used had Latin letters on them. Finbarr knew several amongst the bards and druids who could read. A few generations ago, the learned men of the island, using vowel and consonant sounds from Latin, had even invented a simple writing of their own for carving memorials in Celtic upon standing posts or stones. But though from time to time one would come upon a standing stone with these strange ogham scratch marks, like notches on a tally stick, down its edge, this early Celtic writing system had never become widely used.

  Nor, Finbarr knew, was it used for recording the island's sacred heritage.

  "It is not hard to tell why," Conall had explained to him. "Firstly, the knowledge of the druids is secret. You wouldn't want some unworthy person reading it. That would anger the gods."

  "And the priests would lose their secret power as well," Finbarr remarked.

  "That is perhaps true. But there is a further reason. The great possession of our learned men, bards, filidh, and druids is their feat of memory. This makes the mind very strong. If we wrote down all our knowledge so that we didn't have to remember it, our minds would grow weak."

  "So why have you learned to read?" Finbarr had asked.

  "I am curious," Conall had said, as if this were natural. "Besides," he had smiled, "I am not a druid."

  How often had those words echoed in Finbarr's mind.

  Of course his friend was not a druid. He was going to be a warrior. And yet… Sometimes when Conall sang and closed his eyes, or when he returned from one of his solitary wanderings with a faraway, melancholy look, as though he were in a dream, Finbarr couldn't help wondering if his friend had not entered… He did not know what. A borderland of some kind.

  And so he had not really been surprised when, towards the end of spring, Conall had confessed: "I want to take the druid's tonsure."

  The druids shaved straight up from their ears over the top of the head. The effect of this tonsure was to give a high, rounded forehead; unless of course the druid was already going bald at the front, in which case the tonsure hardly showed. In Conall's case, since his hair was thick, the tonsure would leave a dark, V-shaped shaved area over his brow.

  There had certainly been princely druids before.

  Indeed, many people on the island considered the druid caste to be higher than even kings. Finbarr had looked at his friend thoughtfully.

  "What will the High King say?" he had asked.

  "It is hard to say. It is a pity that my mother was his sister."

  Finbarr knew all about Conall's mother: her devotion to his father's memory, her determination that her son should follow in his father's footsteps as a warrior. When she had died two years ago, she had begged the High King-her brother-to make sure that her husband's line should be continued.

  "Druids marry," Finbarr pointed out. Indeed, the druid's position was often transferred from father to son. "You could have children who would be warriors."

  "That is true," said Conall. "But the High King may think otherwise."

  "Could he forbid you, if the druids want you to join them?"

  "I think," Conall replied, "that if the druids know the High King does not wish it, they will not ask."

  "What will you do?"

  "Wait. Perhaps I can persuade them."

  It had been a month later that the High King had summoned Finbarr.

  "Finbarr," he had begun, "I know you are my nephew Conall's closest friend. You know of his wish to become a druid?" Finbarr had nodded. "It would be a good thing if he changed his mind," the High King said. That was all. But from the High King, it was enough.

  She hadn't wanted to come. There were two reasons.

  The first, Deirdre knew, was selfish. She didn't like leaving home.

  It was a strange place to live, but she loved it.

  In the middle of the island's eastern coast, a river, having descended from the wild Wicklow Mountains just to the south and made a sweeping inland curve, came out through an estuary into a broad bay with two headlands-as if, Deirdre thought, the Earth goddess Eriu, the island's mother, was stretching her arms to embrace the sea. Inland, the river formed a broad flood basin known as the Liffey Plain.

  It was a river of changing moods, subject to sudden rages. When it was angry, its swollen waters would hurtle down from the mountains in violent flash floods which carried all before them. But these fits of rage were only occasional. Most of the time, its waters were tranquil and its voice was soft, whispering, and melodic. With its wide tidal waters, wooded marshes, and low mudflats fringed with grasses, the estuary was usually a place of silence, but for the cries of the distant gulls and the piping curlews and the heron gliding over the shell-strewn shoreline strands.

  It was almost deserted, except for the few scattered farmsteads under her father's rule. Two small features there were, however, each of which had already given the place a name. One, just before the river opened out into its mile-wide marshy estuary, was manmade: a wooden trackway across the marshland, which crossed the river at its shallowest point on hurdles and continued until it reached firmer ground on the northern bank. Ath Cliath this was called in the island's Celtic tongue-the Ford of Hurdles-which was pronounced roughly as "Aw Cleeya."

  The second feature was natural. For the spot where Deirdre was standing lay at the eastern end of a low ridge that ran along the southern bank overlooking the ford. Below her, a stream came from the south to join the river, and just before it did so, encountering the end of the little ridge, it made a small bend, in whose angle there had developed a deep, dark pool.

  Blackpool, they called it: Dubh Linn. To the ear it sounded "Doov Lin."

  But though it had two names, hardly anybody lived there. Up on the slopes of the Wicklow Mountains there had been settlements since time out of mind. There were fishing villages and even small harbours along the coast both north and south of the river's mouth.

  Down by the river marshes, however, though Deirdre loved their quiet beauty, there was not much reason to settle.

  For Dubh Linn was a borderland, a no-man's-land. The territories of powerful chiefs lay to the north, south, and west of the estuary, but even if one or the other claimed a sovereignty from time to time, they had little interest in the area; and so her father, Fergus, had remained undisturbed as the chieftain of the place.

  Deserted as it might be, Fergus's territory was not without significance, for it lay at one of the island's important crossroads. Ancient tracks, often hewn through the island's thick forests and known as slige, came from north and south to cross at the ford. The old Slige Mhor, the Great Road, ran west. As well as being the guardian of the crossing, Fergus also offered the island's customary hospitality to travellers at his house.

  Once, the place had been busier. For centuries, the open sea beyond the bay had been more like a great lake between the two islands where the many tribes of her people dwelt, and across which they had traded, and settled, and married back and forth for many generations.

  When the mighty Roman Empire had taken over the eastern island-Britain, they had called it-Roman merchants had come to the western island and set up little trading posts along the coast, including the bay, and would sometimes come into the estuary. Once, she knew, Roman troops had even landed and set up a walled camp from which the disciplined Roman legionaries with their bright armour had threatened to take over the western isle as well. But they had not succeeded. They had gone away, and the magical western island had been left in peace. She was proud of that. Proud of the land and people of Eriu who had kept to the ancient ways and never submitted.

  And now the mighty Roman Empire was in retreat.

  Barbarian tribes had breached her borders; the imperial city of Rome itself had been sacked; the legions had left Britain; and the Roman trading posts were deserted.

  Some of the more adventurous chieftains on the western island had done well out of these changing times. There had been huge raids on the now defenceless Britain. Gold, silver, slaves-all kinds of goods had come across to enrich the bright halls of Eriu.

  But these expeditions went out from harbours farther up the coast. Though merchants still ventured from time to time into the Liffey estuary, the place was hardly busy.

  The house of Fergus, son of Fergus, consisted of a collection of huts and stores-some thatched, some roofed with turf-in a circular enclosure on the rise above the pool, surrounded by an earth wall and fence. This ring fort, to give the little earthwork its technical name, was one of a number starting to appear on the island. In the local Celtic tongue it was called a rath. In essentials, the rath of Fergus was a larger version of the simple farmstead-a dwelling house and four animal sheds-to be found all over the more fertile parts of the island. There was a small piggery, a cattle pen, a grain store, a handsome hall, and a smaller secondary dwelling house. Most of these were circular, with strong wattle walls. Into these various accommodations could easily be fitted Fergus, his family, the cattleman and his family, the shepherd, two other families, three British slaves, the bard-for the chief, mindful of his status, kept his own bard, whose father and grandfather had held the position before him-and, of course, the livestock. In practice, these numerous souls were seldom all there at the same time. But they could still be accommodated for the simple reason that people were accustomed to sleeping communally. Set on the modest rise overlooking the ford, this was the rath of Fergus, son of Fergus. Below it, a small water mill by the stream and a landing place by the river completed the settlement.

  The second reason why Deirdre hadn't wanted to come concerned her father. She was afraid he was going to be killed.

  Fergus, son of Fergus. The ancient society of the western island was a strict hierarchy, with many classes. Each class, from king or druid to slave, had its derbfine, its blood price to be paid in case of death or injury. Every man knew his status and that of his ancestors. And Fergus was a chief.

  He was respected by the people of the scattered farmsteads that he called his tribe as a chief of kindly but sometimes uncertain temper. At a first meeting the tall chieftain might seem silent and aloof-but not for long. If he caught sight of one of the farmers who owed him obedience, or one of his cattlemen, it could mean a long and expansive conversation. Above all, he loved to meet new people, for the guardian of the isolated Ford of Hurdles was deeply curious.

  A traveller at Ath Cliath would always be splendidly fed and entertained, but he could abandon any hope of going about his business until Fergus was satisfied that he had yielded every scrap of information, personal and general, that he possessed and then listened to the chief talk, and talk some more, and yet some more again.

  If a visitor were especially favoured, Fergus would offer wine and then, going over to a table on which his prize possessions were kept, return with a pale object cupped reverently in his hands. It was a human skull. It had been carefully worked, however. The crown of the skull had been cut neatly off and the circular hole had been rimmed with gold.

  It was quite light. The pale bone felt smooth, delicate, almost like an egg. The empty eye sockets stared blankly, as if to remind you that, as all humans must, the tenant of the skull had departed to another place. The mad grin of the mouth seemed to say that something in the condition of death was meaningless- for everyone knew that around the family hearth you were always in the company of the dead.

  "This was the head of Ere the Warrior," Fergus would tell the visitor proudly. "Killed by my own grandfather."

  Deirdre always remembered the day-she had been only a little girl-when the warriors had come by.

  There had been a fight between two clans to the south and these men had been travelling north afterwards. There were three of them; they had all seemed huge to her; two had long moustaches, the third had his hair shaved except for a high, spiky ridge down the middle. These terrifying figures, she was told, were warriors. They were greeted warmly by her father and taken inside. And from a leather rope slung over the back of one of the horses, she had seen the grisly sight of three human heads, the blood on their necks congealed to blackness, their eyes staring, wide yet sightless. She had gazed at them with horrified fascination. When she had run inside, she had seen her father toasting the warriors with the drinking skull.